I attended my 4th or 5th whole horse dissection last weekend. I have dissected horses from 4yrs old to 25yrs old. All had been ridden. The common thing among all of them was the joint damage.

One common thing I hear from students is, I ran out of time.  Trust me I get it!  The problem with horses is that they do need time and consistency. That doesn’t mean you have to work them an hour everyday (unless you have competition or distance riding goals). It does mean you need to be intentional in your daily interactions.

I’ve been training horses for close to 30 years. Every 5 years I reflect on my previous 5. If I can’t look back and see areas I’ve improved, then I need to stop. So far it hasn’t happened. Looking back, it’s easy to see how about 60% of my wrecks could likely have been avoided. I can see how much I’ve learned in just the last 5 years.  I put a lot of time and money into continuing my education every year. There is always something new to learn.  As a trainer, my horses often

Train with chaos. I find that too many of us train in “sterile” environments. There is no clutter. Everything is quiet. We make sure there is nothing that will spook our horse. We obey barn rules like no running, no jumping, hang up the hose, etc. We act completely shocked when we haul our horse away from their sterilized environment and they get overwhelmed and anxious in a new environment with chaos.

End of year Freebie. Yes, a day late Don’t live in the past while you are working your horse. Leave the past in the past. If your horse had a good session yesterday, remember it fondly but don’t compare today’s session to it. You will only get frustrated if they don’t reach that level again. Meet the horse where they are that day. If your horse had a bad session yesterday, forget about it. Don’t walk into today’s session expecting the same problems as yesterday or you will ge

Yes a day late. Sometimes life just gets busy.

Expose your horse don’t flood your horse. Sometimes seeing the difference in these concepts can be hard.

Don’t be afraid of going backwards in your training. Some days we need to step back and practice some basics. While this can seem like failure or backsliding, ultimately it is what will propel you forward.

Here are some general guidelines that can help you when working with your horse.

Texas has an EHV outbreak after some big barrel races in central Texas. It can be scary for horse owners.

Yes a day late. Life has life a lot lately.

Yes late. I was out of town. I’m under the weather. My husband got deployed out of state as soon as I got home.

If you own a vehicle and drive that vehicle, you have to do maintenance. There will be oil changes, tires, ball joints, shocks and other miscellaneous repairs/maintenance to do. It’s considered normal wear and tear. Your vehicle will have a recommended maintenance schedule to keep it operational and get you down the road.

Correction is not a bad thing. Correction can be bad.

Yes late, I drove 18hrs straight through the night to get home so I was tired.

Yes, late. I wasn’t feeling well

From Jana: You can’t brace when you are trying to flow.

Yes late because I can’t keep track of days lately.

Your hand will drown out your leg. Your horse will not be able to focus on your leg if your hand is hanging on their face or in their mouth. Anytime I feel like the horse is dull to my leg, I try to give a release with my hand and try again. Most of us ride with too much contact. If we can’t just lay the rein in a finger to ride, it’s probably too much. It takes time to get there but riding with too much contact all the time ensures we never will.

We need to stop using words like stubborn, lazy, belligerent, high strung, marish, cold backed, etc. when describing our horses. These terms have no meaning in the horse’s world and they give us excuses to ignore pain and punish behavior we don’t understand.